But then I realize that’s what this is.
Years had passed since One’s death, without incident. It had gotten easy to imagine it was a fluke. If we were feeling really hopeful, we could imagine One had died in an accident. That the Mogadorians hadn’t caught our scent.
That time is over. We know for sure now. The Mogadorians have found the second member of the Garde, and killed him or her. Two’s message to us, to the world, was the last thing he or she would ever do. Their violent death was now written across my skin.
We know two deaths is no fluke. The countdown has truly begun.
I almost faint, but pull myself to consciousness by biting my lip even harder. “Six,” Katarina says, wiping the blood from my mouth with a cloth. “Relax.”
I shake my head.
No. I can never relax. Not ever.
Katarina is straining to keep her composure. She doesn’t want to frighten me. But she also wants to do the right thing, to honor her responsibilities as a Cêpan. I can tell she’s torn between every possible reaction, from outright panic to philosophical cool; whatever is the best for me and for the fate of the Garde.
She cradles my head, wipes the sweat from my brow. The water and the salve have taken the sharpest edge off the pain, but it still hurts as bad as the first time, maybe worse. But I won’t comment on it. I can see that my pain, and this evidence of Two’s passing, is tormenting Katarina enough.
“We’ll be okay,” says Katarina. “There are still many others. . . .”
I know she is speaking carelessly. She doesn’t mean to put the lives of the Garde before me—Three, Four, and Five—ahead of my own. She is just grasping for consolation. But I won’t let it pass.
“Yeah. It’s so great others have to die before me.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I can see my words have upset her.
I sigh, putting my head against her shoulder.
Sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I use a different name for Katarina. Sometimes to me she’s not Katarina or Vicky or Celeste or any of her other aliases. Sometimes—in my mind—I call her “Mom.”
CHAPTER FOUR
We’re on the road an hour later. Katarina white-knuckles the steering wheel of our truck through country roads, cursing her choice of hideaway. These roads are too rough and dusty to go faster than forty miles per hour, and what we both want is the speed of a highway. Anything to put as much distance as possible between us and our now abandoned shack. Katarina did what she could to scrub our tracks, but if what we imagine is true—the Mogadorians killing Two seconds after we saw her fatal blog post—then they moved fast, and they could be racing towards our abandoned home right now.
As I watch the fields and the hills pass through the passenger window, I realize that they could already be at the shack. In fact, they could already be following us on the road. Feeling like a coward as I do it, I crane my neck and look through the rear window, through the dust trail our truck kicks up in our wake.
No cars trail us.
Not yet, at least.
We packed light. The truck was already loaded with a first-aid kit, a lightweight camping set, bottled water, flashlights, and blankets. Once I was ready to walk again, all I had to do was pick out a few items of clothing for the road and retrieve my Chest from the lockbox under the shack.
The panic of flight gave me little time to feel the searing pain of my second scar, but it returns to me now, lacerating and insistent.
“We shouldn’t have responded,” says Katarina. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”
I look at Katarina for signs of judgment on her face—after all, I’m the one who insisted we write back—and I’m relieved to find none. All I see is her fear, and her determination to get us as far away as possible.
I realize that in the confusion and haste to flee I forgot to notice if we turned north or south at the crossing at the edge of Puerto Blanco.